Akasaka Prince Hotel

Akasaka Prince Hotel is the setting for a week-long stay that exposes the divide between Kawashima Masayuki’s respectable working life and the violent purpose he is pursuing in private. Its ordinary details—a business expense, a room overlooking Tokyo Tower, and a call to Yoko—frame a period in which his self-image and his plans become increasingly difficult to separate.

Setting and Stay

Kawashima checks in shortly after noon, using his JCB card and registering under his real name. He has reserved a twin room for a week, with a distant view of Tokyo Tower. The stay is approved as his first serious vacation and follows his success in securing a jazz festival account; his firm grants his request and provides nearly 900,000 yen in expense money. The hotel thus accommodates a trip presented as professional observation of salarymen, while also giving him privacy and time away from his usual routine.

Kawashima’s Divided Self

After checking in, Kawashima calls Yoko. The familiar domestic sounds in the background sharpen the contrast between his life at home and his isolation in the hotel. Looking out over the city as dusk settles, he reflects that he has become someone others would not suspect. He connects this change to the years since he left the stripper he had lived with: he returned to school, resumed drawing, found a job, and met Yoko. Yet he cannot settle whether his former self or his newer, apparently ordinary self is the real one; both seem real, even as they feel unrelated.

Private Plans and Impulses

The hotel stay also gives Kawashima space to develop his plans. After revising his seven pages of notes, he locks them in his briefcase and looks out toward Tokyo Tower, now unlit. Later, after deciding that his imagined victim should be young, he finds himself consumed by desire for an older woman instead. He turns to a sex guide and calls a massage service, rationalizing the decision as necessary if he is to sleep and begin preparations the next day. The reversal makes the hotel more than a temporary business address: within its private room, methodical preparation and impulsive appetite occupy the same stretch of time.